We keep hearing in news reports that this is the month of ‘Ramadan’ for Muslims, so this seems like the right time to unpack that word.
Many people know that ‘Ramadan’ is the month of fasting, so it might strike them as odd that during Ramadan there are street foods stalls in the Sydney Muslim suburb of Lakemba, and a lot of feasting goes on.
So how does that fit with fasting?
The answer is that the fasting only applies between sunrise and sunset, and after sunset they are allowed to tuck in!
Here’s the official Oxford definition of Ramadan: ‘The ninth month of the year in the Islamic calendar, during which Muslims observe strict fasting between dawn and sunset.’
The Oxford then adds this explanatory note: ‘The lunar calculation of the Islamic calendar brings the fast eleven days earlier each year, so that in a cycle of about thirty-three years it passes through all the seasons successively. Ramadan was also a holy month in earlier Arab tradition, and, according to the solar calculation of the pre-Islamic calendar, would have been uniformly one of the hotter months.’
And that bit about ‘hotter months’ is relevant because the word ‘Ramadan’ comes from Arabic word meaning ‘scorching heat.’
The word ‘Ramadan’ is recorded in English from the 1500s—so from around a thousand years after it was instituted by Mohammad.
This year Ramadan more or less coincides with the Christian month of Lent.
The Oxford definition says that Lent is ‘A period of fasting and penitence, beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending shortly before Easter.’
This comes from the Old English word ‘Lenten’ meaning the season of Spring.
This word ‘Lent’ goes right back to the very birth of the English language among the Anglo-Saxons.
Now what I find so interesting is that politicians and the media want to tell us all about Ramadan but seem to have forgotten entirely about Lent.
This is despite the fact that more 11 million Australians say they are Christians—while only one million say they are Muslims.
So, it doesn’t pay to belong to the majority, does it?
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